The Station

The new weather station is up and running. In fact it's been live since Friday afternoon, and it's amazing. For years I've been used to the inconsistancy and lack of reliability from my Oregon Scientific WMR-968. It was a "you get what you pay for" moment. So the Davis 6250 is like night and day.

First the until itself is solid. I love the idea that every instrament is in one piece of hardware. Davis calls it the ISS, for Integrated Sensor Suite. My daughter calls it a space station on our roof, so ISS is appropriate I guess.

I got it in the mail around noon on Friday and was done with the setup by 3. That's not bad considering I had to mount the pole, assemble the ISS, do the initial config on the console, and get it running with my Virtual Weather Station software.

The mount, called WeatherMount from Ambient Weather is solid. My biggest concern with this entire project was the mount, because I had never bolted something to a roof. Turns out it's an extremely solid bracket and pole solution. Here is the initial mounting steps:

This positioning put the instraments a solid three feet above my roof line. Recommendations are for seven feet above the roof, but I didn't find that practical for my set up.

After mounting the pole, it was just a matter of bolting the ISS to the top of the pole with a U-Bolt. And bingo. Done. Weather station installed:

Initial DataThe Davis got a good test right away. Saturday we had a pretty gusty afternoon, with my weather station recording a 41mph wind gust. I guess that answers any questions whether I mounted it properly.

Then yesterday morning under a frost advisory we reached 33.8°, being verified by many other stations in the area.

Also a problem I've also always had, rain collection, has been a breeze with the Davis. Friday night in to Saturday morning we recieved 0.09" of rain. The 6250 offers resolution of 0.01", while the WMR-968 only offered 0.04" resolution. That means every drop gets measured. A huge improvement.

Overall I feel ready for this winter. This weather station was worth every penny. Bring on the high winds, rain, snow... anything.

Colder Weather: It's Coming

This morning Central Ohio was reminded that winter isn't that far away. A blistering hot summer has given way to fall (officially starting Saturday), and gradually cooler air has made its way in to our area. Everyone woke up to temperatures in the low 40's, with some outlining areas getting in to the 30'. Here at home we got down to 42°. The last time we were colder? All the way back on April 27th... 38°.

Seeing my breath this morning made me think of snow... winter... my favorite season. Having moved about 20 miles north I get excited thinking about the possibilities of new winter storm scnearios. Yes, it's only 20 miles, but I can't explain the number of times I've seen storms drop many more inches just a few miles north of where I am.

Snow is only a few weeks away (if we're lucky enough to have it that early), and with that the NWS in Wilmington reminds me that I have definitely moved to a new area. Areas north of the I-70 cooridor are in a different criteria for Winter Storm Warnings and Advisories. Last year it took a solid 4" to even get Advisories. Now the NWS has decided to scale that back to 3" because of requests from EMS officials.

The new criteria looks like this:

That pretty much means I can't compare last year's advisory and warning numebers to this year's. They'll be different, for sure. But I'm looking forward to this. A new challenge.

Weather Station UpdateAbout a month ago I posted about how I was looking for a new weather station, to replace my dying Oregon Scientific WMR-968. Well... I've pulled the trigger and the new station should be here by Friday.

I decided on the Davis 6250 because of all the great reviews I've read and the reliability. It was a little pricy, but well worth it. The only remaning challenge is mounting it on my roof. In my new house I don't have a chimney for mounting, so I've decided on a direct roof top mount. My only fear is if it'll be secure enough for some of our high wind storms. I guess we'll just have to see.

Isaac's Bust, Summer Summary

This Labor Day weekend was supposed to bring us drought relief. Some rain. The rain we have so desprately needed for the past few months. The setup was perfect, a tropical system moves inland, curves with the jet stream, and drops a few inches on parched soil.

That didn't happen.

At least not for most of us.

Instead Isaac pretty much rained itself out before it got here. The reminant low slowed way down as it headed east, dove south, and got caught in a cold front. The relief never came.

Parts of Ohio got upwards of 4", just to the east of Columbus. But that didn't include us. No, instead here in Canal Winchester we got a three day rain total of 0.50". A weekend that promised to be a wash out just became a humid, overcast holiday.

In what seems to be a disturbing pattern, areas all around Columbus got over the 1" mark, with the center of the map staying relatively dry:

Canal Winchester, marked with the white spot, tallied 0.50" of rain this weekend

A sad result to what was supposed to be a drought buster for the area.

Summer SummaryMeteorological Summer is over here in Central Ohio, and it'll be better remembered for heat and dry conditions more than anything. The NWS in Wilmington put out stats for this summer already, so I won't go in to much statistical detail, but a couple interesting things stand out:

Columbus had it's third warmest summer. With an average temp of 76.4°, we fell 0.7° short of an all time record set back in 1934. The 40 days above 90° (Columbus saw 44) and 3 above 100° helped, I'm sure.

Columbus had it's 11th driest summer. My rainfall stats weren't accurate this year with weather station issues, but based off of NWS data we were 5.77" below normal this summer alone.

Significant Summer WeatherThis summer was a quiet one, just like most summers here in Central Ohio. However the one significant story was the June 29th Derecho. Power outages and significant property damage is usually sustained during ice storms and tornadoes, but the Derecho proved it can do a lot of the same.

This amazing graphic posted the next day on the NWS's website shows the awesome progression of this storm across our state:

The Derecho left thousands without power for a couple weeks and made sure everyone knew exactly what this meteorological term was.

As usual, a rather uneventful summer. Bring on fall. I'll leave you with the final stats for summer: